Elizabeth's accession in 1558: a difficult inheritance
A Throne Worth Worrying About
When Elizabeth I became queen on 17 November 1558, she inherited a kingdom of about three million people, a half-empty treasury and a Church torn between Catholic and Protestant. England was a small country on the edge of Europe, dwarfed by the empire of King Philip II of Spain and locked in fear of Calais’s recent loss to France. Elizabeth was twenty-five, unmarried and untested. Her advisors, led by William Cecil, expected immediate trouble.
Elizabeth inherited four overlapping problems in 1558: questions about her legitimacy and gender, a Crown debt of around £300,000, deep religious division, and a hostile France with troops in Scotland.
Society and Government
Elizabethan society was a strict hierarchy. At the top sat the monarch, then nobles (about 50 great families), then the gentry, yeomen, tenant farmers, labourers and the homeless poor. About ninety per cent of people lived in the countryside. Government ran from the Crown outwards: the queen made decisions with the Privy Council, Parliament granted taxes and passed statutes, and Lord Lieutenants and Justices of the Peace ran the counties. Without a standing army or police force, Elizabeth’s authority depended on local gentry doing what she said.
The Virgin Queen: Legitimacy and Gender
Elizabeth’s position was legally fragile. Her mother, Anne Boleyn, had been executed in 1536 and Elizabeth had been declared illegitimate by Parliament. To Catholics across Europe, that ruling still stood — making Mary, Queen of Scots, a great-granddaughter of Henry VII through a legitimate Tudor line, the rightful queen of England. Pope Paul IV refused to recognise Elizabeth at her accession.
Gender added another problem. Many believed a woman could not rule alone. The Scottish Protestant John Knox had published The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women in 1558, attacking female rulers as unnatural. Marriage was the obvious solution because it would produce an heir and add a male partner, but every choice carried danger: a foreign Catholic prince could make England a satellite of Spain or France; an English noble would unbalance the court.
Students often imagine Elizabeth confidently rejected marriage from the start. In 1558–59, the opposite was true: Parliament petitioned her to marry within months of her accession, she entertained serious negotiations with Philip II of Spain and Archduke Charles of Austria, and the ‘Virgin Queen’ image was largely cultivated later. The early years were a real crisis of choice, not a grand strategy.
Her Character and Strengths
Despite her difficult position, Elizabeth had significant assets. She had been carefully educated by Roger Ascham, was fluent in Latin, French, Italian and some Greek, and could quote Scripture from memory. She had survived years of suspicion under her half-sister Mary I, including imprisonment in the Tower in 1554, and emerged politically cautious. She was also charismatic in public — her London entry in January 1559 was a deliberate display of accessibility, with Elizabeth stopping the procession to receive a Bible from a child actor representing Truth.
Elizabeth’s personal strengths — education, political caution learnt under Mary I, and skill at public display — partially offset her weak legal position. Her January 1559 London entry was carefully staged Protestant theatre.
Financial Weakness
The treasury Elizabeth inherited was effectively bankrupt. The Crown owed about £300,000, much of it borrowed at high interest from Antwerp bankers. Mary I had spent heavily on the war against France that ended with the loss of Calais. The coinage had been debased by Henry VIII and Edward VI to pay for earlier wars, meaning the silver content of coins had been deliberately reduced — this caused inflation and damaged trust in English money. Without sound finances, Elizabeth could not afford a war, even if one was forced on her.
Religious Divisions
England had changed religion four times in twenty-five years: Catholic under Henry VIII, more Catholic in detail; Protestant under Edward VI from 1547; firmly Catholic again under Mary I from 1553, with about 280 Protestants burnt as heretics; and now Elizabeth, raised Protestant, on the throne. Many of England’s most experienced bishops were Marian Catholics. Returning Protestant exiles, who had fled to Geneva or Frankfurt under Mary, brought back radical ideas. Elizabeth needed a settlement that would not trigger civil war — religious war in Germany had ended only with the Peace of Augsburg in 1555.
The French Threat
The most immediate danger in 1558 was France. King Henry II of France was hostile, allied to Scotland through the ‘Auld Alliance’, and his daughter-in-law was Mary, Queen of Scots — who was already publicly quartering the arms of England on her royal display, advertising her claim. French troops were stationed in Scotland under Mary of Guise, the regent for her daughter. England’s northern border was therefore exposed to a Catholic, French-backed kingdom that contained Elizabeth’s strongest rival.
Calais had been English since 1347. Its loss to France in January 1558 — ten months before Elizabeth’s accession — was a humiliation associated with Mary I, who reportedly said the word would be found written on her heart. For Elizabeth in 1558, Calais was not just a lost port; it was proof that France could push England back, that English military power was overstretched, and that the war Mary I had joined for Philip II had cost England real territory for nothing.
An Inheritance Worth Dreading
By December 1558, Elizabeth’s government was already drafting a religious settlement, opening peace talks with France at Cateau-Cambrésis, and recalling exiles. The young queen’s strengths were real but limited: she could not change her gender, her debts or her enemies overnight. The first months of the reign were not a triumphant Tudor moment — they were crisis management with Cecil at her elbow.